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Rand Paul Visiting Facebook and Google on Fundraising Tour

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky will shake hands with top executives at Facebook, Google and eBay on a fundraising tour through Silicon Valley later this week.

Paul will begin his trip Thursday at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., where he'll take a tour and meet with Facebook higher-ups (no word on whether Zuckerberg will attend). Facebook has played host to conservative lawmakers before, welcoming Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) back in September 2011.

Paul will then disengage from the tech world for a moment to deliver a speech to the Hoover Institute. He'll then hop back in the Silicon Valley saddle with a visit to Google to meet with executives and answer questions from Google employees from around the world who are sending them in online.

Friday, Paul will take a tour of eBay's offices and meet with company leadership. He'll then give a dinner speech at the Reagan Library Foundation and later leave the state.

It may seem odd that a senator from Kentucky is looking to cozy up to the leaders of the technology world. However, Paul may have aspirations beyond the Senate: his name frequents the (very) early 2016 presidential shortlists. It can't hurt Paul to have some of the country's top companies in his corner should he decide to seek the highest office.

Paul has also been trying to position himself as a key player in the Republican Party's efforts to claim the technology industry as its own. It has been almost a year since Paul released "The Technology Revolution," his four-page manifesto attacking net neutrality and arguing the Internet economy is most productive without government regulation. More recently, Paul fiercely defended Apple when the company was summoned by Congress to testify on its overseas tax practices, calling it "America’s greatest success story."

"Sen. Paul believes that the tech sector will be a primary driver of US economic growth and prosperity in the coming years, and that a healthy and vibrant tech sector is vital to US competitiveness in the global economy," Doug Stafford, senior strategist to Paul, said in a statement provided to Mashable about the senator's California trip.

"He wanted to take this opportunity to visit with tech leaders and entrepreneurs, who he believes must be kept free from government regulation that threatens to stifle innovation, which will spur job creation and which promises to improve the quality of life for hundreds of millions of Americans and billions more people around the globe."

Do you think Rand Paul's libertarian politics will appeal to Silicon Valley's movers and shakers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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